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Many European countries suspended mandatory conscription after the Cold War, and especially between 2000 and 2010. However, with the changing security situation in Europe, more and more countries are considering the re-introduction of the draft. That is why, it is important to evaluate the impact of conscription on draftees, including its effect on fertility outcomes. Additionally, fertility is of particular interest because birth rates have been below replacement levels in most European countries at least in the last two decades. This, combined with the increase in life expectancy, has contributed to aging population and raises concerns about the future economic prospects and sustainability of the continent. Military service could be related to fertility in several ways. Compulsory service for men would affect the marriage market and subsequently child-bearing outcomes. For example, men who serve in the military would have to delay higher education at least by a year, given that they plan to continue their education after high school. One possibility is that this leads to older men meeting younger women if partners meet at college. Alternatively, in case the partners know each other prior to the draft, service could delay marriage by up to a year due to the conscription, postponing planning and having children, and potentially having fewer children as women might be less able or less willing to have a child after a certain age. Finally, some men who plan and would otherwise continue their education might choose to not do so or to further postpone it once they disattach from studying during their service. For some men, this might influence their marital and subsequent fertility outcomes. In either of these scenarios, a draft or its suspension is likely to be connected to fertility.

This study examines the effect of the suspension of the draft in Spain in December 2001 on three fertility outcomes of men that would have been drafted in the absence of the suspension. The author performs the analysis in a difference-in-differences framework. Potential concerns and policy implications are also discussed.

The findings suggest that after the suspension of the draft, individuals started to have their first child earlier given that they decide to have children. Consistent with the overall time trend, they became less likely to have a child and started to have fewer children. However, the age at birth of the first child decreased while the number of children and the likelihood of having a child increased for men relative to women, after compared to before the suspension of the mandatory draft.

The author extends prior literature by investigating the effect of the abolition of compulsory military service in Spain in December 2001 on fertility. This is novel is several ways. First, to the best of the author’s knowledge, previous literature has examined the effect of this Spanish reform only on labor market outcomes prior to men's conscription. Second, even for other countries that terminated the compulsory draft, fertility has been under-studied, providing an opportunity for further exploration. Third, this analysis is based on rich Census data, representative of the population in Spain. Finally, given the inconclusive findings of previous studies for other countries and the proposed re-introduction of the draft in some parts of Europe, additional evidence of the effect of the conscription has important policy implications necessary for the evaluation of future military service policy decisions.

Off-farm employment is an important factor associated with fertility transition in many developing countries. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of female off-farm employment on their fertility desire in rural China.

Based on the data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, the authors adopt an instrumental variable approach to address the endogeneity issue. Desired number of children and desire for a second child are used to measure fertility desire.

The results show that off-farm employment participation significantly reduces women's desired number of children and the likelihood of their desire for a second child. Moreover, off-farm employment reduces women's fertility desire mainly through pathways including the weakening of son preference and a decrease in job autonomy, rather than the changes in leisure hours. Further evidence suggests that social health insurance plays an important role in moderating the adverse relationship between off-farm employment and the desire for a second child. The fertility-reducing effects are more pronounced among younger women, among those participating in off-farm wage employment and among families with only wives' participation in the off-farm labor market.

This paper contributes to the existing research by investigating the causal impact of off-farm employment on fertility desire in a rural developing context and the possible underlying mechanisms responsible for this relationship. This study provides important insights on this topic in developing countries and may have important implications for theory and practice.

The aim of this article is to review the literature on fertility tourism in terms of social policy implications. There has been a global growth in interest in fertility tourism, especially amongst these in developed countries travelling to developing countries for fertility needs. Due to women's increased involvement in the workforce and changing societal norms, the age at which females start having children has risen resulting in a need for many to seek fertility help. These developments have led to a growth in fertility tourism and related services.

The authors undertake a systematic literature review on fertility tourism to identify cognate research themes that relate to social policies such as assisted reproduction facilities, medical tourism and changing societal attitudes.

The findings of the study have important implications for social policy particularly regarding the tourism and health industry, practitioners and policymakers. This involves focussing on new geographic regions that are underrepresented in current research but have a high interest in fertility tourism. Currently much of the research is centred around western contexts but as evident in our review newly emerging markets in countries that have high infertility rates requires further attention. In addition, the authors provide directions for future research avenues that focus on how to evaluate changing social policies with regards to reproductive choices.

Whilst there has been much discussion in the media about fertility tourism there is limited knowledge about social policies related to human reproductive systems, so this article is amongst the first to discuss societal implications.

This paper aims to examine certain factors that have contributed to the decline in fertility in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in recent years, taking the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a case study.

Using data from the 2008 UAE Household Expenditure Survey, this paper analyzes the determinants of fertility using a Poisson fertility count model.

The results show that economic factors, in terms of the costs and benefits that families derive from children in the UAE, are not important determinants of fertility due to the large size of social insurance provided by the UAE Government. Moreover, labor market participation by either males or females does not play a critical role in determining fertility in the UAE. The two primary causes of decline in fertility are: late marriages or late first births; and higher levels of female education. Other contributors to drops in fertility are marriages between UAE national males and foreign females and increases in childbirth intervals. Conversely, the size of household residences and the number of domestic workers working in a households contribute positively to fertility.

Little attention has been paid in the literature to explain the fast drop in fertility in the GCC countries. This may be due to the limited availability of data for this region. This paper, to the authors’ knowledge, is the first to shed some light on the effects of many socioeconomic factors on fertility in the GCC.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the link between two different family policy dimensions – one supporting the combination of work and parenthood and one supporting stay-at-home mothers – and fertility rates between 1995 and 2011 in 33 industrialized countries.

Total fertility rates were regressed on the two policy dimensions, earner–carer support and traditional–family support, using pooled time-series analysis with country fixed effects and stepwise control for female labor force participation, unemployment rates and GDP.

The analyses show that earner–carer support is linked to higher fertility, while traditional–family support is not. Also, higher female labor force participation is linked to higher fertility before GDP is included. Conversely, higher unemployment is correlated with lower fertility levels. Sensitivity analyses with and without day care enrollment on a smaller set of countries show no influence of day care on the results for family policy.

The results give weight to the argument that family policies supporting the combination of work and parenthood could increase fertility in low-fertility countries, probably mediated in part by female labor force participation. Earnings-related earner–carer support incentivizes women to enter the labor force before parenthood and to return to work after time off with their newborn child, thus supporting a combination of work and parenthood.

Hong Kong entered an ultra-low fertility regime nearly two decades ago (Census and Statistics Department, 2013). The causes of ultra-low fertility in Hong Kong are the same as those in other developed economies (Tu and Lam, 2009). The phenomenon, in most of the western world and East Asian societies, is attributed to the incongruence between individual-oriented and family-oriented institutions (McDonald, 2000), or simply role incompatibility between work and motherhood (Stycos and Weller, 1967). One viable solution to alleviate role incompatibility is to introduce family-work reconciliation policies, including maternal and paternal leaves, subsidized child care and health care and work facilities that allow for breastfeeding (Lappegard, 2010). The purpose of this paper is to assess the family-friendly measures for enhancing fertility.

The paper analyzes the current demographic conundrum and makes recommendations.

Subsidized child care is an effective measure if it satisfies the five main criteria, namely, availability, accessibility, acceptability, cost, and quality, suggested by Rindfuss et al. (2003). Other family-friendly measures are inadequate in absolute terms and inferior to those of Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore, and South Korea (Ministry of Manpower, 2014; OECD, 2013). The possibility of shifting away from the ultra-low fertility regime remains doubtful, especially because low fertility is a combined effect of an increasing prevalence of single older women (Census and Statistics Department, 2014), a shift of the utility function of children toward other consumable goods (Inglehart, 1982) and a desire for achieving upward intragenerational and intergenerational social mobility (Ariès, 1980).

Since Hong Kong still subsides in the regime of the lowest-low fertility, an evaluation of the related family-friendly measures will provide constructive insights to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government how to provide incentives to citizens to consider making childbearing decisions.

Because the introduction of family-friendly measures and gender ideologies are intractably linked (Brewster and Rindfuss, 2000), Hong Kong stays in the middle of nations of families and nations of individuals, influenced by western ideas and traditional family values. It is hence worthwhile to examine the effectiveness of different family-friendly measures.

Knowledge about current size and structure of a country's population is needed for the formulation and implementation of policies and programs in almost all sectors of public life. The purpose of this paper is to provide population projection for Oman, using population census and family health survey data.

Component method is used for projecting future population of Oman. Population Census data of 2003 by sex and by five‐year age groups were used. The base life expectancy of Oman is assumed to be 73 years and the base total fertility considered as 5.1 children per woman.

Depending upon the achievement of replacement fertility by the year 2025 or 2030 or 2035 the population of Oman in 2050 will vary from 4.5 million to 5.0 million. The different scenarios of population projection indicate that the population of Oman will not be stabilized before 2100.

Population projection depends on assumptions about mortality, fertility, base life expectancy and migration. If these assumptions change then the projections will also change.

Because of high fertility in the past, women in the reproductive ages will increase for up to several decades. Thus, population growth will continue because of momentum effect, even if Oman achieves replacement fertility say in 2030. The age at marriage will increase.

The rapid socio‐economic development and increased women empowerment will create a new outlook and ideas about lifestyles, leading to a decline in fertility. The decline in fertility is strongly related to social, health, education, employment opportunities of women and economic development, which through a variety of mechanisms, reduces the fertility desired and increases the fertility regulation through contraception, birth spacing and increased age at marriage of females. Because of increase in life expectancy and falling birth rate, the absolute number of the elderly population will have enormous impact on health care needs and hospitalization.

This paper deals with the population projection of Oman. Timely and accurate information about population trends is crucial for the socio‐economic development of a country. Knowledge about current size and structure of a country's population is needed for the formulation and implementation of policies and programs in almost all sectors of public life such as health, education and employment.

In some settings, sharecropping is associated with large extended families, high fertility, and early age of marriage. These demographic practices are often considered to be labor strategies for working extensive share‐tenancies. Where agricultural production is primarily labor intensive, landlords can increase their income, within certain limits, by maximizing the number of adult workers. If landlords hold considerable power over their tenants, they may have a large influence on demographic practices. Although this relationship between sharecropping and some of these demographic practices is found throughout much of history in northern Italy, the evidence is less clear for fifteenth‐century Tuscany. Herlihy and Klapisch‐ Zuber's study of the Catasto of 1427, a set of tax declarations, found no relation between household structure and land tenure. Some of their work suggested that fertility was higher among sharecroppers, but this relationship was not specified in detail. They did not consider the relationship between land tenure and age of marriage. This paper reconsiders the relationship between land tenure, household structure, fertility, and age of marriage. To try to correct for problems with Herlihy and Klapisch‐Zuber's land tenure variable, their data were aggregated to the administrative unit of analysis. The aggregated data show that sharecropping in rural Tuscany in 1427 was associated with household extension, high fertility, and early age of marriage, although the magnitude of this relationship was not large. Possible reasons for this weak relationship are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impacts of women's education on the mean age of women at first birth (denoting the timing of fertility) and total fertility rate (TFR, denoting the level of fertility) using cross-country panel data.

The estimations proceed in two steps: first, the timing and level of fertility regressions are separately estimated, and second, two regressions are estimated at the same time as a form of a system equation to accommodate the correlations between error terms.

It is found that a higher women's education tends to delay of child birth or family formation. In addition, there exists a negative relationship between the female secondary school enrollment ratio and TFR, meaning that the opportunity costs of childbearing and rearing increases when the level of women's education enhances. However, the authors have also found that the impacts of women's higher education on TFR is statistically insignificant in a few cases of estimations without sample selections.

Fertility decline is a shift of childbearing to older ages. The delay of child birth or family formation is the major cause of the recent fertility decline, because a late women's age at first birth reduces the chances of having any further children. This implies that the timing and level of fertility are highly correlated to each other. In particular, many studies showed that women's education and employment have been identified as major parameters for the increase in women's age at first birth. Nonetheless, little attention has been paid to an empirical analysis of the relationship between women's education and the timing of fertility. Therefore, this paper is an extension of previous studies, estimating the relationship between women's education and the timing and level of fertility at the same time.

This paper's objective is to provide improvement plans that take into account problems in the housing sector, as well as low fertility and demographic problems caused by aging, by suggesting long‐term policy directions considering all future possible changes in fertility and housing policies.

This research analyzes age specific fertility rates by socioeconomic index, composition of three scenarios about the total fertility rate, the forecast of the future population by the cohort component method, and the forecast of housing demand according to the Mankiw‐Weil (M‐W) model.

If the fertility rate increases through improvements in socioeconomic conditions, then we see that housing demand also increases. If the fertility rate level is higher than that of scenario 3, then a housing demand decrease comes later. However, even if the low fertility rate issue is addressed, the problem with the housing market due to the aging is expected to continue for the time being.

If the population decrease cohort is accumulated due to the continuously low fertility, then it will cause an increase in the reduction effect of housing demand. Considering housing spaces, the elderly require a relatively large amount of available space in Korea where the aged population is rapidly increasing. This increase in seniors could counterbalance the reduced demand for housing.

This is a long‐term‐oriented paper about housing demand and the changing trends in Korea, which is undergoing demographic changes due to low fertility and ongoing aging. We need to monitor fertility rates and the structure of population changes to achieve a stable housing market, and we should also recognize that these structural changes by age will have diverse ripple effects on housing demand.